Home / Poker News January 2010 / EPT Deauville – Day 1B report
EPT Deauville – Day 1B report
Posted by: James Carter. - Sat, 2010-01-23 05:34
The second day of the EPT’s Deauville stop fulfilled all expectations of a record breaking turn out. In addition to Day 1A’s 339 registrants, Day 1B yielded a starting field of 429 players, taking the total number of starters to 768, obliterating last year’s 645 player total.
The majority of the “name” players got rolling on Day 1B. Dario Mineri, Bertrand Grospellier, Luca Pagano, Victoria Coren, Alex Kravchenko and Jude Ainsworth were only some of the big names to belly up to the tables on this day. Peter Eastgate, the 2008
WSOP Main Event Champion had been scheduled to appear too, but for three hours there in the beginning it seemed like he wouldn’t show up. He did arrive eventually though.
Freddy Deeb, Isabelle Mercier and Joe Beevers were also there.
PokerStars’ Luca Pagano proved to be the most successful player of the day, the
EPT obviously his favorite hunting-grounds. He made a monster addition to his stack during the very first level of play, by doubling up. His stack peaked around the 8th level, when at one point he held 200,000 chips. He did drop some of those chips before the end of the day, but he did manage to have 198,500 chips bagged when it was all said and done. That stack was large enough to give him the official lead in the poker tournament at the end of Day 1B.
Dario Minieri, another
PokerStars pro, had a great start too. He scored a huge pot against Marc Naalden, a move which resulted in the Dutchman’s elimination and in a huge addition to Minieri’s stack, which gave him the chip lead at that point in the poker tournament. Things didn’t go as smoothly for Minieri later in the day though, and he kept bleeding chips away. He did survive eventually, but only on a 64,000 chip stack.
Julien Brecard, one of the PokerStars sponsored players and the winner of the People’s Choice award at the French Poker Awards ceremony held on Day 1A, had a run similar to Minieri’s. The Frenchman picked up a pair of Aces early, and he wrung all the juice out of them to take down a huge pot. Later, he faded away though and he ended up with 58,900 chips at the end of the day.
